Cam Cole: Win or lose, just be gracious. It works for all occasions

Monday, February 8, 2016

By Cam Cole, Vancouver Sun columnist

Sunday, after the Denver Broncos' defence broke the spirit of Cam Newton and the Carolina Panthers, winning Super Bowl 50 by a 24-10 score, the National Football League's most exciting player (regular season edition) sat down at the obligatory post-game microphone, half-hiding under a hoodie and behind a bored expression, and sulked his way through seven questions, emitting a total of 18 words in response to the last six. And walked out.

Photographed by:Kevin C. Cox, Getty Images

SAN FRANCISCO - Miss Manners has not yet released her treatise on the proper way to behave after a Super Bowl, but a good general guideline is "be gracious."

It works for all occasions.

Mind, we're not endorsing the old adage "When you win say nothing, when you lose say less." The sentiment is fine, but no one wants to walk into a locker room after a championship game and encounter a collection of strong, silent types with their lips zipped.

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Everyone can appreciate a little righteous anger in defeat, or exultation in victory. It's what makes the world go round. Television pays a lot of money to see it.

Just . . . be gracious.

Easy to say; harder than it looks.

Sunday, after the Denver Broncos' defence broke the spirit of Cam Newton and the Carolina Panthers, winning Super Bowl 50 by a 24-10 score, the National Football League's most exciting player (regular season edition) sat down at the obligatory post-game microphone, half-hiding under a hoodie and behind a bored expression, and sulked his way through seven questions, emitting a total of 18 words in response to the last six. And walked out.

He might as well have painted a target on his back.

But what of the Broncos, in victory?

They were as off-the-charts mouthy as Newton was mute. Not all of them, but enough to notice.

Gracious? They couldn't resist ridiculing the Panthers, panning their easy schedule, calling their 17-1 record an illusion, bragging how they had knocked the will to win out of Newton and made him look less than mortal.

Safety T.J. Ward, who had an interception and a fumble recovery, said that he knew the Denver defence had got in Newton's head in the first half, because the quarterback, who had been named the NFL's MVP on Saturday, was already pouting.

"He just ain't faced nobody, man," said cornerback Chris Harris Jr. "They haven't played nobody. You look at their schedule and you see we're the first dogs they've played and we showed it.

"Their whole team was rattled. We started hitting them, running backs fumbling the ball, (Newton) throwing picks . . . they ain't been hit like we hit today."

The Broncos' official Twitter feed put out this quote from cornerback Aqib Talib: "There ain't no Easter Bunny, there ain't no Santa Claus, there ain't no Superman."

Was Newton asking for it? Sure. He showed up Sunday wearing golden high-top cleats with "MVP" lettered on the front, and a warmup top with the Superman logo. Fans have dubbed him Superman, and he's never denied it.

So now that he's been taken down a peg, a good many people who don't like his act will be ripping him today for dishing it out but being unable to take it. For hamming it up, dancing, dabbing, grinning like a Cheshire cat after touchdowns, and answering critics with, "If you don't like it, keep me out of the endzone."

Well, Denver, with a beauty of a game plan authored by NFL lifer Wade Phillips, did. Newton neither got in the endzone himself nor passed for a touchdown.

Phillips, the self-deprecating defensive co-ordinator who goes by the Twitter handle @sonofbum - a tribute to his father, longtime NFL coach Bum Phillips - at least injected a modicum of humour into the situation. He tweeted, post-game: "A little dab will do you, but too much Dab will undo you!"

"They want to be famous. We want to be champions," Ward said to a USA Today reporter. "They want to be rappers and backup dancers. We want to play football."

In a memorable defensive effort, the Broncos completed a playoff sweep of the Pittsburgh Steelers, New England Patriots and Carolina Panthers - translated: Ben Roethlisberger, Tom Brady and Cam Newton - in which they surrendered just one TD to each.

They sacked Newton six times Sunday; game MVP Von Miller alone forcing two fumbles by the quarterback, each of which led to a Denver touchdown. Two touchdowns were the margin of victory.

Carolina had allowed just 14 sacks of their quarterback all season. How were the Broncos able to make their pass protection look so ordinary?

"Because we're dogs," lineman Malik Jackson, who recovered Newton's fumble for the first Denver TD, told reporters. "Because we go out here and demolish offenses. We put offenses to sleep. They can't do nothing against us, man. At all."

Someone pointed out their words were not so different from what came out of the Seattle Seahawks' mouths two years ago, after they humbled Denver 43-8 in Super Bowl XLVIII.

Supposedly, it isn't bragging if you can back it up.

But no, it's bragging, all right. Backing it up just gives you the license to bloviate, if that's how you choose to play it, post-game. If you decide being gracious is too much to ask.

For Newton, this was unmarked territory. He was humiliated in the biggest game of his life. His receivers dropped passes. His offensive line was overrun. There was plenty of blame to go around, but somehow the worst of it always accrues to the quarterback.

Too much credit in victory, too much responsibility for defeat; that's the nature of the position. But if Newton is going to rub opponents' noses in it when he wins, he'll have to accept the flip side.